Arsenal huge summer clearout predicted, plus call to lay off referees

By Sir Hardly Anyone

Seated as I was, on the morning after the Palace match, in the Toppled Bollard, famed watering hole of the elite of English newspapers’ football reporters I perceived from without the hoof-beats of a galloping hoard of wildbeests as in came four football reporters working in the medium of radio, each anxious to bag a skinful before clocking on for what they call work – by which I mean the making up of fantasy tales.

And looking at them I could tell that if any of them had had a mind, there would have been something on it.

But grapple as they may with the concepts of “analysis” and indeed “reporting” they remained stuck totally in the same groove as they manfully battled their habitual disability of playing the same old song over and over: the song that says Arsenal are going to sell players this summer.

Indeed catching up with the trend the Daily Cannon tells us: “Roma are willing to take two unwanted players. They are Mustafi and Elneny.”

Meanwhile the men working with companies with TV rights and other priviledges are continuing the propaganda war on the side of PGMO and its referees. The Telegraph headline, for example, “BT Sport documentary an Easter reminder not to make scapegoats of referees” just about sums it up. How can that be a reminder? I am not sure many people are going to be reminded of what jolly nice chaps the referees are on the basis of PGMO propaganda put out through newspapers that have signed contracts with the PGMO to say that they will not criticise PGMO. As I said to the lads in the Bollard, “do you really think us football fans are THAT stupid?” and in reply they nodded in a way that was supposed to look profound but actually looked rather pathetic.

“Do you know?” said a thoughtful old timer from one of the worst offenders, downing his fourth breakfast pint and whisky chaser, “I’d bet that if all the players in the Arsenal squad were placed end to end – not that I suppose one could do it because you’d never get them to lie still for long enough – they would reach halfway down Piccadilly.”

“Further than that,” said Plonsongy-Philpott who writes under the name Bert Egg for the Star, “Some of them are quite tall.”

As we pondered this insight one of the raving negativists got his laptop working and read from Football Fan Cast the line, “Never hated an Arsenal player more”, which he immediately wrote down along with “Going to cost us top 4.”

It is gibberish of course but also part of the ceaseless drip drip drip of negativity in which the club is entrapped by the bloggettas as the dubious fellas who scribble for a living.

But still, there is the occasional ray of light available, as for example with ThisisFusbul which popped up with the headline, “Pundit Tony Cascarino has been waxing lyrical over Arsenal prospect Ainsley Maitland-Niles, claiming that the wide man could be the next Gareth Bale.” Actually I have always wondered about Cascarino. I mean, as he is Irish, shouldn’t his name be O’Cascarin?

But I let that pass as the Foot.Lond man at the bar came up with a more interesting comment, claiming that “Should Watford beat Manchester City at Wembley next month, the team which finishes six will have to begin their Europa League campaign in the qualifying rounds on July 25.”

The others in the bar stared at him like men who have drained the wine cup of life to its dregs, only to discover a dead FA official at the bottom. As I tried to explain to the crowd gathered therein, England have three teams qualifying for the Europa, of whom the third is the League Cup winner, which has to play in the qualifiers. But if that club has qualified elsewhere for Europe (as has happened) then it can be the FA Cup winner, or if they have qualified, the seventh club in the league. So if the FA Cup is won by Man City, then it is team seven, which is much more likely than any other scenario. I really don’t know where FootLond get this stuff from.

Back with the negativity, the Daily Express man told us that “Arsenal have decided to put Shkodran Mustafi up for sale in the wake of the club’s 3-2 Premier League defeat to Crystal Palace on Sunday, reports claim.” Those reports are from, oh, how amazing, Football.London but this was not a report from an insider in the club, but rather a set of thoughts from the manic FootLond staff who use the article to tell readers what they think Arsenal ought to do.

Thus it turns out Arsenal have not decided at all but FootLond demands that Arsenal sell Mustafi, Jenkinson, Kolasinac, Elneny, Ozil, Ospina and Chambers under the headline “the nine Arsenal players fighting for their future as the summer transfer window approaches Foot Lond?”

Who are the others? I don’t but as I remember saying to that Karl Marx chap once, there might be an idea for a book in it, along with the notion that capitalism is doomed.

Watching the screen for incoming news we saw that PainintheArsenal joined in, and came up with “3 obvious players to sell regardless of price,”while Talk Sport copied that with a similar message with ‘Arsenal need as big a clear out as Man United this summer.”

I looked at one of the Talksprout journos who was at the bar and thought to myself that if he had a mind there was probably something on it, but it was hard to say what. I remembered that he once told me that dogs are like journalists – in that both classes of beings soon forget and I think there is something in that.

Thus in desperation we asked the man from the Guardian what he was going to say. “Stars may look to exit if Man U miss out on Champions League” he told us. Mind you, he also once told me that his uncle George had discovered that alcohol was a food – a concept that he claimed was well in advance of modern medical thought, and that, as they say, sums it all up.

Brilliant. I had a pop-up link to this page, courtesy of Amazon, with the first part of your headline as its headline. You couldn’t make it up. Well, of course, you do (the satirical articles, that is) but the media always go one better! Obviously Amazon doesn’t do satire.